#if there are errors in this pretend you didn't see them (unless they're egregious)

[shivunin]

barges into your ask box!! hello/goodbye hugs that linger for fenris and maria 👀?

Can't barge in if the door is open! Thanks, Zen c: I'll have you know that this was originally two thousand words longer before I reconsidered, so...here is the happy version instead c: (the prompt list)

(Words: 2,548)

A Fond Farewell

In the early days, Fenris cataloged Hawke’s mannerisms out of suspicion. She was a mage, after all, for all that she’d helped him without the promise of recompense. It mattered little that she seemed to wear her heart on her sleeve. There might be some trick to her—no, had to be some trick—and it was wisest to watch her so he would be warned if the betrayal ever came.

So: Fenris watched her smile at the others, the way she would wrinkle her nose when Varric told an especially bad joke, the way she tipped her chin back and laughed with her whole body when she was pleased. He watched the way she fought, as if she’d been born doing it and it came as an afterthought to her now. 

But most of all, Fenris saw the way Hawke was always reaching out for someone.

In the beginning, she would pull in Carver whenever she told a story about Ferelden, elbowing his side or resting a hand on his shoulder while she gestured with the other. Her brother seemed used to the contact and did not react at all when she did so, as if this behavior was to be expected from her. 

Fenris didn’t understand it, but he didn’t need to; in the beginning, it was enough just to note that it was a habit of hers and move on.

Over time, her casual contact branched out to the others: she would drape her legs over Isabela’s lap when she was tipsy, and lean against Merrill’s side. She linked arms with Aveline when they walked, or rested an arm around Varric’s shoulder when one of them was telling a story. In those early days, there was plainly some awkwardness between her and the human mage—all of them saw it—but soon enough that faded, too, and she would prod Anders' shoulder when making some point or other as they walked.

It was as if she couldn’t help herself, as if she was actually reaching for something else and forever finding it in contact with others. 

More than any of these, Hawke always, always hugged her friends goodbye. 

Every one of them…except Fenris. 

On one of those early days, when they’d said long goodbyes outside the Hanged Man, she hugged the others and paused before him. Fenris stood on the periphery, watching her with narrowed eyes, and she surveyed him with a tilted head. 

“G’night, Fenris,” she said after a pause, smiling brightly, and reached behind her for her brother’s wrist, “Come on, Carver. Told you that girl wasn’t interested, or she’d be here by now.”

“But she said—” her brother began, already irritated, and the two of them walked away still arguing. 

Fenris, only mildly surprised, walked away without any further fanfare. He was not impressed by her decision to leave him be; he’d been indicating with every syllable of body language he had that he’d no desire to be touched. That she’d honored the unspoken request was good, but nothing especially notable—though, of course, he did file the interaction away with his other observations.

For a long time, this was how they parted: she would hug the others, perhaps even kiss their cheeks, and then she would pause before Fenris, smile at him, and say her goodnights. 

If he wondered what it might feel like to be touched by her, however briefly, outside the context of healing—well. He was the only one who needed to know what he wondered about when the lights were doused. 

It was at least a year before this habit changed, not until well after the disaster in the Deep Roads and the loss of her brother to the Wardens. There was sorrow, and a frantic span of time in which she adjusted to her newfound wealth and moved her mother to Hightown. During that time, Fenris began to wonder if she might be done with her old friends entirely. But no: only a few weeks after the move had commenced, Hawke was barging into Varric’s quarters with all the subtlety of a summer storm just she always did, and discarded her cloak over the back of a chair instead of on the coat rack. 

“Sorry,” she told the table at large, and settled onto the bench beside Fenris, “Didn’t mean to be late. Had to help a girl find her lost doll.”

“And you didn’t get mugged over it? Color me impressed, Hawke,” Varric said, dealing her in without a pause, “Haven’t missed much yet. Bela was telling us about her conquest of the week.”

“Oh, I’ve finished now,” Isabella said, rolling her eyes and lifting her tankard, “Not that I had any help, if you take my meaning.” 

Some small, hidden worry gradually lifted from Fenris’s shoulders at Hawke’s presence. It wasn’t that he didn’t care for the others; some of them were perfectly tolerable. It was just—Hawke made sense of their group. If she had left for good…Well. He’d begun to wonder if it was wise to stay in the city; that was all. Such considerations seemed less reasonable when she was sitting at the table, nudging Bela with her elbow while she described her mother’s choice in decoration. 

In the small hours of the morning, when they finally parted ways, the group exchanged their long, messy goodbyes as usual. Only—this time, Fenris stepped forward and set a hand on her elbow when he might otherwise have stood at a distance.

“Goodnight, Hawke,” he said, immediately regretting the change when her eyes went wide at him. 

“Oh!” she said. It was foolish, it was absurd, but for a moment it felt like the whole world hung in the balance. 

Then, just as she had with the others, Hawke reached for him. She did not embrace him, but instead set a hand on his shoulder and took a step closer. They were rarely so near each other unless one of them was bleeding, and then they usually had more urgent things to worry about. Fenris wondered how he’d never noticed before that her eyelashes were so dark and fine, or that smile line bracketed her mouth even when she wasn’t smiling. 

“Goodnight, Fenris,” she said, the lines around her mouth deepening, and then she dropped her hand and turned away, reaching for Aveline’s elbow. 

“Aveline,” she was already saying, unperturbed, “I have a question about a fine point of city law.”

“Maker, what now?” the other woman asked warily. 

“If one is nude in one’s own courtyard—” Hawke began, her voice trailing off as they walked away. 

Fenris stood for a moment, watching them, abruptly aware that he would need to walk up the same set of stairs to go home. Usually, he would be well up them before she even finished saying goodbye to the others. It felt…odd, somehow, to trail her home, if only because she followed the same route he did now. 

Best wait a moment, he thought, and caught the dwarf’s speculative glance when he turned. 

“What?” Fenris asked, pausing, and Varric shook his head. 

“Oh, nothing at all,” he said, turning for the door, “Goodnight, Fenris.”

“Yes,” Fenris said, and decided it would be best to round a corner before giving Hawke a lead up the stairs. 

It had been fine. 

It had been—it had just been a goodbye. She did it constantly; it meant nothing, and it meant nothing that he stood around the corner for nearly fifteen minutes thinking about what her hand on his shoulder had been like, and what he might have felt if she’d touched bare skin instead. 

In nights that followed, Fenris decided that it would be stranger to go back to the way they'd been. He would simply have to accept that cursory touches were part of his evenings from now on. Aveline was increasingly busy with the guard, and it seemed increasingly foolish to trail behind Hawke like a lost pup at the end of the night. Fenris walked with her instead, all the long way up the stairs to Hightown, parting at her door. This was not a problem; he’d have to walk that way regardless, and Hawke was good company. 

Goodbyes took place at her front door, between the two of them alone. The longer this remained their routine, the more casual it felt to talk with his hand resting on her shoulder or elbow. She went from carefully touching his shoulder to patting his chest or nudging his hip, and Fenris didn’t stop her. When she finally reached up to embrace him, it felt natural, normal, even inevitable. 

But here was the problem: Hawke had a habit of continuing conversations while she hugged the others goodbye, and Fenris was no exception. If she was midway through a point about something when she reached for him, she would keep on talking into his ear until she was finished or one of them pulled away. 

One of them—it was always Hawke who pulled away; Fenris found that he did not have the urge to let go of her so quickly, even if she’d wrapped her arms around his shoulders for several minutes. It was nothing; just another quirk of hers. There was no doubt in his mind that this was true. 

One evening, after nearly two years of this, she embraced him to say goodbye and spent at least ten minutes explaining one of the finer points of the horrible play they’d just finished watching. 

For his part, Fenris had missed much of it, so focused on not looking at Hawke that he hadn’t heard any of the dialogue and had only minimally absorbed the actual events onstage. He’d no idea how he’d wound up in this position after all that; he felt hot and itchy now, desperate to dance away and put distance between them. The longer she held on, the stronger the feeling grew, until at last he cleared his throat and interrupted her. 

“Hawke,” he said, and just that. 

It was easy enough to grasp her waist and set her away from him, and she let go without protest, wincing faintly. 

“Sorry!” she said, taking several steps back. 

In the light of the flames outside her front door, he could see the flush on her cheeks. 

“It is…fine,” he said, also taking several steps back, “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” she said faintly, and spun on her heel for the door. 

Fenris walked away before he had to think any harder about the interaction, but it was no use. He could still feel her breath against his neck, the lines of boning in her bodice pressed against his hands, and he couldn’t seem to banish the foreign urge that had seized him while he’d held her. He didn’t want to kiss Hawke—did he? 

He paced in his room for a time, scowling hard at his own feet over the broken tile. 

His clothes smelled like her. 

No; he would not think of it.

Hawke should be seeing someone else, someone who wasn’t on the run. Surely there was someone out there who could give her a better life, who would make her happy.

She’d blushed. He’d never seen Hawke blush. 

No, no; think of something else.

Surely she did the same thing to the others when she was in the middle of some explanation; surely this had meant nothing in particular, even if she had flirted with him in the past. 

Why could he still feel her in his arms? 

Frustrated, Fenris dragged a hand back through his hair. This was—it was simply an aberration. That was it. The next time they saw each other, she would say goodbye in her usual manner and that would be—it would be fine. 

More than fine. Yes. This would not be a problem.

Later that week, the two of them walked together up the stairs from Lowtown, companionably discussing the benefits of upgrading one’s armor to a higher class of steel. It seemed an ordinary enough evening, but when they reached her door she immediately turned toward the manor. 

“‘Night, Fenris,” she said cheerfully, and shut the door behind her. 

Fenris froze, hands slightly raised, and stared after her for a moment. 

This was…fine. 

Fenris had gone a very long time not touching Hawke. It should matter very little now that she hadn’t said goodbye. It shouldn’t bother him, and she was not obligated to—to—well, she could do whatever she wished. That was all. It was none of his affair. 

But she walked away without touching him the next night, and three days after that when they all met for drinks, and…

He’d had no idea how important that simple gesture had been to him until it was gone, and now he felt its absence as keenly as he felt the absence of his blade when he set it aside at night. The next time they saw each other, Fenris approached her door with grim determination.

“—and that’s why it never made any sense to me at all that there could be werewolves in Ferelden,” she was saying, waving a hand as she spoke, “I don’t care what the stories say, it’s illogical at best.”

“Quite,” Fenris said stiffly, and she glanced up at him, blowing a black curl away from her forehead. 

He wished, intensely, that he’d never noticed the way her lips pursed when she did that. 

“Everything alright?” she asked as they paused at her door. She was already angled toward the door, ready to walk away from him. Fenris sought an answer, but came up with nothing; he stepped forward and embraced her instead, his body moving before his mind could properly disagree. 

She sucked in a breath when he wrapped his arms around her shoulders, but she returned the gesture readily enough. It was different holding her like this; she was slightly shorter than him, though Fenris rarely noticed. When she wasn’t reaching up for him, the top of her head rested just below his chin. 

There was—there was a scar on the top of her head that he’d never noticed before, arching across the center part of her hair. For a strange moment, Fenris was seized by the urge to press his lips to the point where the two lines met. He pressed his cheek to the top of her head instead, and she relaxed against him all at once. 

It was…nice. 

He admitted it to himself, tightening his arms slightly. It was pleasant to hold her; he enjoyed it. He liked the place where her arms had settled around his back. He liked how warm she was where the exposed skin of his upper arms touched hers. He liked the way her hair smelled, and he particularly liked the way she was holding him—as if she liked it, too. 

This was…Fenris needed to think about this. Slowly, reluctantly, he loosened his grip and stepped back. 

“Goodnight,” he said, his voice rough, “Hawke.”

“Goodnight, Fenris,” she said, her hands falling slowly until they rested at her sides again. 

Fenris took a deep breath, considering and discarding several other things to say. Instead, he smiled faintly—the best he could manage under the circumstances, just a quirk at one side of his mouth—and turned to walk away. 

He could have sworn he heard her sigh behind him—but perhaps that was only wishful thinking.

#maria hawke #fenris #fenris dragon age #fenhawke #fenris x hawke #f!hawke #da2 #da fanfic #my writing #i would have posted this half an hour earlier but i could not for the life of me think up a title #naming things: the eternal struggle #i might go back and finish the long version of this eventually but i was like...okay i don't need to recap their whole relationship #for each of these #also i didn't say it earlier but “touch” by july talk is the theme for this one #if there are errors in this pretend you didn't see them (unless they're egregious) #also zen i am taking a leaf out of your book and putting the word count on these from now on (if i can remember) #shivunin scrivening